The use of corn for ethanol has been the topic of heated discussions in the media and among policy makers. As part of this debate, some observers have argued that the use of corn in the production of ethanol has had adverse effects on corn prices. This paper contributes to this reviving debate...

We estimate the determinants of labor productivity growth in 8 new European Union (EU) member states that joined the Union in 2004. Our focus is on the impact of globalization and EU integration efforts on labor productivity growth. Previous studies test the impact of trade using either exports...

Research on transition economics increasingly focuses on problems that characterize non-transition economies and uses methodology and models generally applied to the latter countries. This is particularly the case in macroeconomics. The implication of this is that economists are acting as if, at...

Using monthly industrial sector data from January 1971 to March 2004, we test for business cycles convergence among the major APEC members: Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, USA, and Canada. In addition, we examine the synchronization of business cycles among Australia, Japan, and South...

This paper examines the effect of transition and of political instability on FDI flows to the transition economies of Central Europe, the Baltics and the Balkans. We find that FDI to transition economies unaffected by conflict and political instability exceed those that would be expected for...

This paper derives a stochastic endogenous growth model that investigates the impact of European Union integration on convergence and productivity growth. We deviate from the general strand of literature by not only deriving a theoretical model for the effects of integration on the rate of...

Work on the impact of U.S. monetary policy on emerging financial markets mostly focuses on official federal funds rate announcements; empirical evidence using data on informal communication channels, such as speeches, is scant. Employing a unique data set covering formal and informal...

We compare different fund performance measures to examine which performance measures can generate risk-adjusted returns between high ranked and low ranked China's actively managed open-end equity mutual funds. Our results show that only the 6-factor (Fama and French (2015) five factors plus a...

We examine how the introduction of index futures affects the stability of stock markets in seven emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa [BRICS] and two countries in Europe, i.e. Poland and Turkey) by studying the existence and the impact of positive feedback trading...

This paper studies the role of non-performing loans in the regulatory measures of the Chinese commercial banking system. A threshold panel regression model has been applied to the data of 87 commercial banks in China from 2006 to 2012. The empirical results suggest that a higher non-performing...